Surviving
by Aearwen22
Summary: The Siege of Minas Tirith, as seen through the eyes of a child. Prequel to Light Fingers.


"But why, Da?" Ivoreth asked plaintively.

"Hush, girl! Do you want us to go hungry? I must go - you keep your brother and sisters inside, do you hear me? No running around and getting in the soldiers' way!"

_No, Da - please! _Ivoreth could feel fear building a cold stone in her stomach at the thought of Da leaving them all behind to go to the inn on this horrible day of all days. The dull roar that had begun days earlier, a roar that frightened folk in the streets outside claimed came from a horribly huge army from Mordor itself, had only grown louder over the course of the night, with a dull pounding at the Gate. The last time the great Gate had been opened was nearly two days earlier, to allow in the single horse dragging what looked to Ivoreth to be the dead body of a soldier some claimed to have been the Steward's son, Faramir. In the face of such evil, the people of the city were silent - terrified and cowering.

"Is there even any custom at the inn?" she persisted, hopelessness filling her as she watched her father slip his feet into his worn boots and then rise. Da was strong, brave; he'd survived many terrible things in his youth. Ivoreth needed that strength and bravery today, when the sky outside didn't even allow the light of the sun to penetrate the darkness more than to just give a sick yellow-grey cast to everything.

All she earned for her troubles was a rough cuff on the shoulder that didn't ache nearly as much as did the glare her father gave her. "That isn't your concern, girl. Do as I tell you - or you'll wish you had!" Da shoved Ivoreth aside and stomped to the door. "And be sure to have supper ready when I get here this time. Your Nan would never have made me wait as you did last night!"

The slam of the door made the entire structure tremble, and the silence within the little hut was almost as loud as was the roaring outside. Ivoreth kept her back to her younger brother and sisters, not wanting them to know just how upset she was.

"Ivo? We can't go outside?" Daren asked in a very small voice. And finally tiny Raini began to whimper.

Ivoreth sighed and pulled in a deep breath to try to calm herself. Once she had herself mastered, she turned and gave the trio clustered just past the rough plank table a thin smile. "You wouldn't want to get run over by a soldier, would you?" she challenged her four year old brother gamely and then reached out to take baby Raini from her sister. "Why don't you and Evi play catch while I give Raini something to drink?"

From the looks on her brother's and sisters' faces, any game they started would only be half-hearted; and Ivoreth didn't look forward to an entire day stuck indoors with three whining children. Their Nan, a gentle soul who had brightened all their days, had died just weeks earlier, leaving a grief-soured husband who could only barely tolerate the sight of the four of them. All the responsibilities and duties that her mother had carried with a smile and a quick laugh - until the fever had caught her - had then fallen on slender, ten-year-old shoulders.

Ivoreth carried the baby over to the hearth and used her apron folded several times to take the little pot of porridge off the hook. Raini was really too young to be eating it, but there was no chance of finding a woman in the area willing to nurse her. All that was at hand to make the gruel more appetizing was the bottom third of a sack of dried berries that had come to them in barter for some of Nan's fine yarn. Ivoreth threw a small handful of the red-brown nuggets into the still-bubbling mess and stirred them in.

The day passed slowly. Raini was fitful, unwilling to settle down to nap, and both Daren and Evien were unwilling to keep themselves occupied for long before they were under Ivoreth's feet again, whining and complaining at being kept indoors. They could play in the courtyard, couldn't they?

None of them was prepared when there was a loud explosion from not very far away, and the very ground beneath their feet rocked. Evien and Daren ran immediately to Ivoreth and clung, while Raini sent up an ear-piercing shriek from her cradle. "What was that?" Evien demanded.

"I don't know," Ivoreth shook her head, just as terrified as the others but struggling to keep herself from panicking. She grabbed up Raini and thrust her into her sister's grasp again. "Here. Hold Raini while I take a look."

"No, Ivo…" Daren whimpered and clung hard. "Don't leave us too, like Da did!"

"I'm not!" Ivoreth snapped and brushed her brother's hand away. "But I need to know what…"

Another explosion, and another moment of dizziness as the hut around and beneath Ivoreth shuddered and shook. Fear made Ivoreth's feet swift, and she opened the door and peeked outside just in time to watch the little inn in front of them - the inn where her father spent his days and earned what little coin he could - burst into flames and shatter like a glass dish dropped on the floor. Burning timbers and embers flew everywhere, including onto the roof of their little hut.

"Evi! Daren! We have to get out of here!" Ivoreth yelled and beckoned them urgently. Her younger siblings stared at her, their eyes wide and their faces frozen in terror. "Come on!" She hurried back in to drag at their arms, the new sounds of flames snapping just above her head driving her. "The house is on fire!"

Grabbing up Raini from Evien, Ivoreth darted across the small courtyard and out the burning and sagging gate into the street, where she was met by the sight of grown men and women running in all directions and screaming. Another new sound, a horrid, deep thud that reverberated clearly through the stone at her feet as well as in her ear, came from the direction of the gate; and then from the sky above came a scream that almost brought Ivoreth to her knees in terror and confusion.

"Hang onto me!" she yelled at her brother and sister after she shook herself free from the terror of that scream. Precious moments were lost trying to break through the shock that had frozen Daren and Evien in place, but finally Ivoreth had them moving again. Together, they scampered across the street and into a small stone alcove barely large enough to hold her and her baby sister, much less the four of them.

Yet another explosion cracked and toppled the stone of the shop just across the way, and then the explosions were everywhere. The stone at Ivoreth's back groaned, and she barely managed to get herself and her siblings away from that wall when it crumpled as well.

There was no running up the sloped street toward the Second Circle gate - the flow of terrified bodies was pulling them closer and closer to the great City Gate and the knot of metal-garbed soldiers pressing hard against it. That deep thud came again, and again, and again, and Ivoreth's eyes widened at the sight of the thick Gate actually beginning to give way inwards a little.

"They're going to break in!" she shouted, barely able to hear herself think over the mayhem: the cries of the people, the yells of the soldiers, the mind-numbing screaming from above, the explosions that kept shaking the ground and the deep, awful thuds against the Gate. Huddled tightly together in a tiny knot, the four of them stared about, too terrified to move again, until Daren reached up and tugged at Ivoreth's sleeve, pointing.

In desperation, Ivoreth followed his gesture to see the darkened opening to one of the great sewer drains that kept the lower part of the City dry during the Spring downpours. Da had told them all once that the sewers led deep within the walls, where great chambers gathered and held the rainwater for later use. It was dangerous in there, Da told them; the cistern was deep, with steep walls that none who fell in could climb. They were never to go near the sewers, and one of the few times when Da had actually beaten Daren had been when he'd come home from work and caught the boy climbing out of the drain.

But right now, those sewers led inside walls that were withstanding whatever pounding was being dealt them better than most of the buildings in First Circle. Ivoreth nodded and, with Raini clutched to her tightly, she led the way across the wide streets, darting in and out between the legs of others who fled, toward the safety that darkened hole in the wall offered. She paid no attention when she heard a horrible, splintering sound as the Great Gate began to give way, but ducked between the bars just inside the sewer drain and then pulled at Daren to follow her when he turned to look when the sounds from the Gate changed.

Ivoreth screamed at the sight of those dark, ugly, _angry_ faces rushing through the hole in the Gate, at the sight of swords and clubs swinging wildly in all directions and tearing into the crowds of people and soldiers just inside the walls. Heads cut from bodies mid-scream bounced like fruit down the streets, with one coming to rest just outside the drain. Ivoreth stared in utter horror at the head of the baker who owned the shop near where they lived as it slowly rolled to a stop in front of her, eyes bulging and tongue extended horribly. Her nose filled with a bitter, metallic stench, and slowly she dragged Daren back through the bars into the darkness within the wall, away from the horror and the blood.

A roar and approaching stomps told her that Daren had been seen, however; and she pulled and dragged harder at her little brother to get him even further back into the darkness. A wooden snap sounded just above her head, and she realized that arrows were being fired into the darkness blindly. "Come on!" she hissed at her brother and sister, and turned her back on the scene of death outside. She followed the rutted channel down into the walls, through yet another set of bars and then into a huge chamber.

Da had been right - the cistern was enormous - and with the water at the level it was now, anyone falling in without someone with a rope to haul them out again would be doomed. And yet, a sloping ramp led up to a walkway that seemed to rim the huge room far above the level of the water. What little light entered the chamber came from above, through the small holes in the ceiling from which dangled small, dark objects. _Those are wells_, Ivoreth realized suddenly, _and those are the buckets!_

Ivoreth pressed her hand against the outer wall and made her way up the sloped walkway. They were not alone, she saw; several other small knots of children had also found the sanctuary within the city walls and were now huddled away from the edge. Suddenly very tired, Ivoreth stopped, let her back rest against the cold stone and sank into a crouch. With Daren on one side and Evien on the other, and Raini held tightly to her chest, Ivoreth closed her eyes and tried not to listen when the terrible screeches sounded just above them, or to the sounds of explosions and screaming.

oOoOo

The silence finally awakened her.

Ivoreth shifted and raised her head, a movement that made Raini whimper quietly and nestle down even tighter against her chest. Her little brother and sister nestled against her on either side, both asleep as she had been. And yet, oddly, Ivoreth could hear nothing but the soft sound of water far below.

She remembered that the din outside the thick City walls had gone on and on, as if it would never end. In the middle of it all, she thought she had heard the sound of horns blowing far in the distance, and yet the screaming, the yelling, the terrible shrieking, had continued. She had finally fallen asleep to it, hoping that there would be a world to return to one day where such sounds would never be heard again. Daren and Evien had pressed close to her, as if somehow Ivoreth would be able to protect them from the ugly sounds, sometimes crying bitter tears of fear and horror at what they had seen. How long they had huddled there, too terrified to move a muscle, Ivoreth would never know; too long.

But now, it was quiet: so quiet, one could hear the rippling of water far below.

Ivoreth gazed out and upwards toward the holes in the cistern ceiling that were the openings of city wells, and saw that sunlight - not that muted, dim and yellow half-light that had lit the City for days before the horror, but truly bright and warm sunshine - was beaming into the cistern like spears of light that danced off of the surface of the water below.

Again she shifted, this time rousing Daren and Evien. She transferred her baby sister into Evien's lap. "Stay here," she whispered urgently. "Do not move - and don't follow me."

"Ivo!" Daren clutched at her. "Don't go!"

"Shhhh!" she soothed at him. "Listen! I think it's all over - but I don't want to worry about you or Evi or Raini. So, Daren, I need you to be the man of the house for a little time. Can you do that?"

That had been a favorite trick Nan had used several times to get Daren to do his chores, and it was just as successful now. Daren subsided back down and put his arms around Evien. "Don't be gone long," he warned her with a serious tone that sounded as much like Da's as he could manage.

Ivoreth nodded. "I'll be right back as soon as I take a quick look," she promised, and then carefully made her way past the others who had come into the cistern after them and now also huddled against the wall. Some of them gazed at her with eyes that were still wide with terror, others with eyes that seemed almost empty of all life. Ivoreth shuddered and moved along, down the ramp and then through the first set of bars and into the darkened drains.

Two others stood just outside the final set of bars, staring out into the courtyard of the city Gate, when Ivoreth joined them. None of them spoke at first - there were no words for what they saw.

The bodies of the dead were piled high, and most of the dead were the horrible, ugly, dark ones who had broken through the walls of the City. While some of them looked as if they'd been taken down by sword or club, most of them looked as if they had simply dropped where they stood, with eyes wide and terrified. Beyond the heap that lay just before the sewer drain, Ivoreth could see Gondorian soldiers and strange, yellow-haired warriors pulling bodies one by one into carts. What few street stones could be seen were stained brown or black.

_Did we win?_ she wondered. _Who are those other warriors?_ Finally she summoned enough courage to open her mouth. "Did we win?"

The tallest of the boys that stood with her shrugged. "If we lost, we wouldn't be here, would we?"

_That makes sense._ Ivoreth looked beyond the bodies, only to discover that not a single building in First Circle had survived undamaged. The wooden structures that had nestled close to the Gate - like their own hut and many others just like it - were nothing but smoldering piles of charred and tumbled timbers. The stone-faced buildings that remained standing had all lost part or all of their fronts, and many had gaping doorways into empty space and windows that looked inwards into the building behind them. The door in the stone front of the inn where Da worked stood alone, barely supported by the remains of stone walls on either side; everything - and everyone - that had been behind that door was gone, including Da.

Those who were not involved in clearing away the dead were wandering around with looks of utter shock and despair. Far too many wore clothing that was stained and filthy, and no small number wore what looked like rough and bloodstained bandaging.

"What do we do now?" the tall boy wondered aloud to no one in particular.

_Good question_, Ivoreth answered to herself. All she knew was that Daren and Evi and Raini were inside, waiting for her to return.

And, somehow, she was going to have to take care of them. Both Da and Nan were gone now, there would be no one else.

Her eye landed on the body of a woman who had fallen behind a tumble of blocks from one of the stone houses - and on the small pouch the dusty skirt not quite obscured. She pushed past the boys and tried not to look at the head of the baker, matching the attitude and shuffling of the others around her until she'd made her way over to the body.

_Stealing is wrong, little one,_ she heard her Nan's voice in her mind.

_But if I don't take it, someone else will, and we all will starve,_ she silently answered Nan's voice. Pulling her Da's little knife from her own pocket, she bent swiftly and cut the pouch strings, then pulled both pouch and knife back into her own pocket in a single, smooth move. She glanced over at the boys and was grateful that they were still busy watching the soldiers.

Ivoreth shuddered, realizing that her life from now on was going to be very different. She tried not to explore the pouch she'd taken, but knew from the feel of it in her hand that it held more coin than Da had seen in most of her life. _I'm a thief now,_ she told herself sadly. _Nan will never forgive me, and Da… _She shuddered, deciding not to even consider what her Da would say or do to her had he known what she'd just done.

_I have no choice. Da told me to take care of them, and this is all I know how to do. But we _will _survive. I swear to you, Da, Nan, we _will_ survive!_

_Somehow._

FIN


End file.
